| CHURCHES CARVED INTO THE MOUNTAIN 21/01/2010 |
| Last updated: 2010-01-28 14:02 EET |
Today in our tourism feature, as part of the Legends of Buzau contest, we present these wonderful places to visit.
Today on our trip we were accompanied by Doina Ciobanu, ethnology archaeologist and a history PhD, curator of the Buzau County Museum.
“In the elbow of the Carpathians area, in the villages of Colti and Buziorul, and other places in Buzau, there are cave churches. These are little churches carved out of the living rock or older geological formations that adapted so that, in the first millennium, sometimes up until as late as the 19th century, monks lived here in seclusion”.
The first Christian missionaries arrived from the Middle East as early as the 3rd century AD lived in the cave dwellings in the Crucea Spatarului Massif. The oldest such dwelling is the grotto called Cave's Bottom, which has been inhabited since the 6th century AD. The walls of the cave which has paintings of some weapons that go back to the Bronze Age and the early Iron Age. The walls of the cave have some writing on them that has gone untranslated to this day.
“Our museum experts worked hard to record them. We charted them, and introduced them to the national and international circuit. They have been dated to the first millennium BC. The Cave's Bottom grotto has some drawings of weapons that have been dated to the late Bronze, early Iron Age. There are also some smaller churches, such as the Dionisie the Weaver church and the Iosif church. Also, the Bag End Church is special, it is quite beautiful. The writing on the walls of these churches suggest they have been in use since the late 18th, early 19th century”.
Getting back to the Cave's Bottom, we find there scratched into the walls some signs. We can identify the Malta and Roman crosses. We can also find the cenobyte dwelling carved into the rock by hermit Dionisie the Weaver, opening up 10 meters above a precipice. We found out from our guest that this hermit's cell, as many places of worship, was dug with a tool called a woodpecker, exhibited at the Amber Museum. It is a curved piece of metal that works like a pick. All the hermits living in the 15 grottoes on the Crucea Spatarului Massif met for prayer at Iosif's church, a cavern 3 meters wide and 10 deep, with a stone altar. Several early Christian symbols testify to the age of the church, built to accommodate all the hermits in the surrounding area. It is a place for faith, it is a place of prayer on holidays. At the entrance we can see the symbol of the fish, an early Christian symbol, to show everyone where the faithful gathered. The cave vestiges in Buzau county were inventoried for the first time in 1871 by Alexandru Odobescu. A multitude of Christian venues stretch across 3 square kilometres.
The steep mountain sides, the thick forest and hidden paths makes access difficult to these cave dwellings. But, as Doina Ciobanu put it, asking a rhetoric question.
“Why do we have around Buzau 22 hermit cave dwellings where Christianity has been practised for centuries, while the whole of Romania has 40 in all? This has persuaded some experts to call this area the Mount Athos of Romania. Some of these cells can be visited, and the traveller who is open to some hard travelling and climbing can visit all of them. The people who want to visit them, dwellings from the 4th to the 13th century, may start off in Alunis, where there is a tiny church that has been in use since the 13th century”.
Although hermits have not lived in these places for a few hundred years, legends circulated by the locals say that their souls still wander the forest. The people who take the 9 km trip to the vestiges in Alunis say that between Bozioru and Colti time flows differently. Many people who are from elsewhere give up on the trip, guessing the path is either too long, too difficult, or both. But Doina Ciobanu may persuade you otherwise:
“I invite all your listeners to visit this tiny corner of the world at the elbow of the Carpathians, which offers you plenty of beauty, from museums to landscapes and atmosphere, with meals and lodging of the highest quality. We expect everyone to come visit our county, and take part in Radio Romania International's contest, the Legends of Buzau”.
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2010-09-06
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